The explosion in information search, retrieval and management that has been fueled by ever-increasing advances in computerized data storage and retrieval systems, attendant with the now pervasive World Wide Web, has made a universe of information available to anyone who is able to afford the price of a simple personal computer and has the infrastructure necessary to connect that computer to the global Internet. Anyone, anywhere, may now have access, at anytime, to such vast stores of information as to dwarf the largest historical library system heretofore known.
Information search and retrieval systems enable the ordinary user to acquire any information or knowledge that they deem necessary to carry out any one of a number of daily tasks, from the mundane such as searching out a recipe, to the more prosaic, such as performing research on a Ph.D. thesis in advanced telecommunication theory. Although the World Wide Web has been termed an information superhighway, it is more appropriately characterized as an “information furball”, in that there are no clear routes, on-ramps or off-ramps, or more particularly entrance and exit signs, that can point a user to the specific “parking lot” or “garage” that contains the information most relevant to their search. In formation is generally presented in web pages which are posted and accessible through an IP address which has no intuitive relationship to the information it contains. It would be as though a library shelves its volumes in the order in which the volumes were received from a publisher, as opposed to being shelved in accordance with any rational structure.
This particular aspect of “information disorganization” is highly relevant in the area of electronic commerce, once it is understood that a vast body of product is being offered by a large number of vendors over an information medium that is not particularly inductive to rational organization and structure. A user must have some knowledge of certain product offerings, or at least some knowledge of the vendors which offer those products in order for that user to access the particular electronic commerce domain or web page where those products are featured. A user who is performing a generalized search for a particular product is often at a loss to know how to begin, much less how to proceed. Accordingly, if a user were interested in obtaining information relating to wood working tools, for example, the user would either have to have a priori knowledge of the relevant tools, the manufacturer or vendor of the tools, or have access to a large body of relevant keywords along with knowledge of a tool manufacturer or vendor's classification system, in order to develop even a starting point for a relevant search.
Pertinent to the difficulties in rational information retrieval discussed above, are the operational characteristics of commonly known and used search engines which have been developed in an effort to make some sense out of the “information furball”. Conventional search engines try to extract particular relevant documents or objects from the plethora of offerings available over the World Wide Web. However, the form and scope of information that is extracted from the net and presented to a user is often as disorganized and unprioritized as the Web itself.
In the context of electronic commerce, a user might be interested in only certain of the offerings made available by a particular commerce domain, while preferring certain other offerings presented on a different domain. Conventional search engines are not able to differentiate between products offered by a multiplicity of commerce domains, particularly when a number of users would assign a different relevance characteristic to the different offerings of the different domains.
Further, anyone ever having performed a search of the Web will recall the frustration at receiving “131,256 hits” in response to a simple query for “java”. This is not as fanciful as it appears, since “java” might refer to a programming language, coffee, or one of the larger islands in the southwest Pacific. The particular “java” being referred to in the search is known only to the user. The vast majority of “java” hits are irrelevant and serve only to confuse, frustrate and misdirect.
Recommendation systems are capable of organizing retrieved search results based on criteria provided by a user or by comparing each of the search results to a single specific referred document (i.e., the “more like this” feature offered by EXCITE™ and FIREFLY™, for example). Google™ is an example of a search engine that incorporates several recommendation system-like features and operates in a manner similar to traditional key-word search engines. A search begins by the user's entry of one or more search terms which are used in a pattern matching analysis of documents available on the World Wide Web. It differs from traditional keyword search-based engines in that search results are retrieved and ranked on the basis of a page importance metric, which differs from a mere number of occurrences of a desired search term.
Notwithstanding the attempt to put a page importance metric on particular pages of particular web domains, a user is still confronted with the inability of traditional search and/or recommendation engines to determine the degree of relevance that any one user places on a particular page or commerce domain. For example, one user might prefer products obtained from the SEARS domain, while other users might prefer products offered by WALMART. Search and recommendation engines are unable to make a relevance connection with the user, if a user were to search for shirts. Conventionally, the same list of site hits would be presented to all users, regardless of their domain preferences.
Certain network browsers allow a user to construct a categorical listing of certain of their favorite web pages or domains, i.e., the “favorites” feature offered by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When visiting a particular page, a user may add that page to their “favorites” as a bookmark and might further organize their bookmark collection according to category. A user must manually select and add a number of sites to their collection which, once added, maintain their importance within the structure without regard to any further access of that bookmark by the user.
A user might construct a set of electronic commerce bookmarks, but these bookmarks might only be pertinent for a particular period of time or in response to a particular interest frame. As a user's interest changes, a conventional bookmark collection will not, unless manually reconfigured from time to time.
Accordingly, what is needed is an intelligent agent or system which is able to understand user imperatives, and track user behavior, so as to adaptively and dynamically construct a personalized, relevance driven domain and/or page map that can assist a user during electronic commerce activities. As a user searches the Web for a particular product offering, the relevance agent or system is able to adaptively inform both searching and result recommendations so as to present only relevant content loaded sites to the user. Further, the relevance agent or system is able to prioritize results in accordance with previously established user preferences for particular commerce domains or specific product manufacturers or vendors.
Having recourse to a user's preferences, the relevance agent or system should be able to automatically generate relevant search parameters, such that if a user is located within a particular commerce domain and wishes to search for particular or alternative product offerings, the system understands the user's desires and automatically generates a directed query for the specific desired goods and/or services.
Such a system should be accessible to a user as an adjunct to a conventional network browser application program and be able to automatically organize and construct an electronic commerce metacatalog, containing only product information which is relevant and timely to a particular user. The system should be accessible at will and not interfere with the ordinary functionality of a browser and, when invoked, not occupy a considerable amount of valuable screen real estate.